Watch out everyone because in this sterling episode of Revenge, things are really heating up! And I'm not just talking about the weather (though the unseasonably hot weather is such an essential plot point of this episode that it's bordering on that annoying thing where people say "Los Angeles is like its own character in this movie,man), but the things that are happening while the weather is hot are also very hot in a metaphorical sense! As the scene opens, we find Helen Crowley dead in our pool house! What do we do! Somehow I was SO sure that they changed into their Super Taupe Tones body disposal outfits the night of the murder but actually those were their NEXT DAY AFTER MURDER outfits, which does make more sense. Nothing screams innocence like beige, obviously.

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the ocean, Jamanda's first morning of unrestrained wedded bliss is interrupted by a Very Sneaky Hamper Man, name of Anders vonPyramidPlayer. In a trial that would test even the strongest of marriages, Anders deploys his "Grossly Misinterpret Conrad's Intent" stratagem and holds the newly wedded Clarke-Porters hostage in search of the evidence. But as it turns out, Anders learned all his tactics from an old copy of Stratego, so while he's trying to figure out if Jack and Amanda "surrounded their flag with bombs, or if that's just another bomb in the middle, and what if it's actually in the front row with all the pawns, nobody ever expects you to put it in the front row???" Jack proves he has a knack (or is that a "jack"???) for subterfuge after all, and Amanda's eyes are drawing a Looney Toons-style dotted line between that fire extinguisher and the back of Anders's head.

Back on the mainland, though, it is still hot! And you know it's hot because everyone SAYS it is, including Nolan who has a FAN and AW MAN THE AIR CONDITIONER BROKE and if we weren't before, we're definitely going to kill the Baby Coral now, Chocolate! BUT LOOK WE HAVE TO GET THROUGH THIS PODCAST BECAUSE WE ARE VERY HUNGRY SO MOVE MOVE MOVE. Emily and Nolan are on a boat! Aiden drags Padma all the way to NYC to tell her something he basically could've texted her, and jeezy creezy thank god they skip that car trip and save us the torment. Like what would their road trip conversations even be about? What the hell would the two blandest people on the planet talk about for two hours? "Omg, can you believe we're both love Saltines and the Dave Matthews Band??" Yes Padmaiden, I can.

Back on the ocean, time is running out! Emily is moving the throttle forward and Nolan is boat hacking (and doing a very good job at not throwing up!)As the episode hastens to a close, we meet the inscrutable TRASK and, what's more, discover TRASK HAS A TASK (and that task is to find out what has happened to Helen Crowley). Perhaps more pertinently, we're given incontrovertible evidence that Emily in fact does have a feeling, it just took her eight years to express it!! (and now Taye Diggs is after her, shit!)

As this Very Important Episode of Revenge comes to a close, resolves are tested, hearts are broken, and wills are reforged into something colder than iron and harder than steel--but the next time your number comes up on that big, karmic wheel, Fauxmanda, maybe just let the necklace go...?

Topics for Consideration:
Gantz: The Suffering of Ealstan
Stinky Boat Bed
THE NECTAHS: Curse of the WereSouthie
Ashley and Her Sizable Bag of Tricks of Many Pockets.
Conrad Grayson: Road Warrior
The Food Pon Farr
Jackting!
LMS or "Lobster Monger Syndrome"
The Adventures of "Blunt Trauma" One and "No Feelings" One, an Emily and/or Emily Amanda and/or Amanda story.

Let’s talk about unions! Despite their vulnerability to venality, I think we have to acknowledge that unions are one of the exceptionally few forces the American worker has acting in their favor in this hardscrabble economy, for example—

Oh wait, we’re not talking about those unions. We’re talking about the ones where you get married on a beach to a woman who you've been deceived into believing is your long-lost childhood crush (and at this point, she appears to have started believing the hype), or where you coldblooded X-out a mean business lady/ancient lich of timeless evil who’s menacing your beautiful baby boykin, or where you visit the unmarked grave of your dead sister who was kidnapped and addicted to heroin and is definitely for real dead now, okay Aiden? Can we like go home already? Because I am not spending the night in Jersey-FUCKING-City, I don’t care if they finally got a Barcade!

With treachery in the air and the stakes soaring ever higher in this already fraught world of beachfront marriages and waterside casino development, Nolan exhibits a seriously déclassé attitude by outdressing everyone at Jamanda's wedding, Danny relives his college days by taking a surreptitious nap during Helen Crowley’s Capitalist Imperialism & Forbidden Blood Magicks 101 seminar, Conrad discovers viagra’s got nothing on the veritable priapism induced by some all-natural wheeling and dealing, Anders sits alone on a boat wondering what Starbuck is doing and why she’s so great (aren’t we all?), Victoria recoups her losses from Ashley’s ongoing Game of Burns by delivering a severe dose of lead poisoning, Padma keeps being whatever, and Aiden makes some of his squintiest faces we’ve ever been privileged to as he demands you RUN THE PROGRAM RUN THE PROGRAM RUN THE PROGRAM. All this and more on this thrilling (comparatively! considering it’s set right in the middle of bland-ass Season 2!) episode of Revenge!

-Dave

The movie I was trying to think of was Blow Up (1966), but I also completely mooshed the plot together with Peeping Tom (1960). Blow Up as we all know from film school is by Antonioni and is a dialogue with and rejection of (neo)realism and the notion that a filmed image is an unmediated representation of empirical reality. Thanks to his sister's horrifying death Aiden is getting an education in viz studies! Next hes gonna be all like GUYS do you even KNOW about the panopticon?

TRIMPS!

-Graz

Topics for Consideration:

#OniConrad
Nolan is the janus figure/ sexual mercurial angel of sexuality -
Amanda "Oops-Upside-Your-Head" Clarke
Vincent Denofrio-Vaughn
THE SCULLY BOX
The Titular Blank Check
Baby Carl’s Adventures with Aunty Chorcolate and the Elf: The Time I Got Rubbed On Some Cow Udders: A Tale of How I Contracted Mumps.
Our upcoming Hamptons Research Project, testing the plushness of the terrycloth robes and getting arrested for trespassing--please look forward to it!

What light in yon window breaks? Why, it's another Revengecast! That's right, it's your boy Dave here to tell you that I edited this episode specifically so Graz couldn't take out all my gross baby voices and/or references to weird breastfeeding subplots in manga (also she's been busy with work and stuff)! After forty-five minutes where we're distracted by Shia Lebouf, The Stallion that Mounts the World, Cat's Paws, and General Vampire Lore, we finally make it to the first commercial break, before which Helen Crowley, aka Lady InitiativeHeart, offers Aiden an ultimatum: kill Victoria Grayson in the next 24 hours or your definitely (possibly, probably, maybe) alive sister will die! What a moral conundrum, gasp!! With such intrigue boasted on the horizon, it's difficult to really sink yourselves into the Nolan and Padma house hunting subplot until you realize they are actually are experiencing the twin joys of house hunting and traitorism. Why you gonna play a Nolan like that, Padma? He never did nothin' to no one. Except Marco. And as we've already discussed, Marco is ANNOYING and therefore DOES NOT COUNT. Chocolate makes a big decision without considering the ramifications for even a single second and Jack and Declan keep existing; it's a good thing the water's out at the Stowaway AGAIN because that means they couldn't wash the boot black and chimney soot smudging their faces, which does them the huge favor of constant, overwhelming pathos when it comes time to sway Creepy Toothy Handsome Man's conscience to their side and, in a gradually becoming characteristic display of Human Emotion, he sells them back the bar so it can continue drowning them in debt like a big, rotting, baby-filled albatross around their scrawny, wiry, chimney-cleaning orphan necks! (luckily, Anders was distracted by a pick-up game of Pyramid at the time and could not stop the deal from going through)

Meanwhile, back on the other side of the country, Revenge sets most of the episode in Los Angeles because, I guess, they wanted to give their CG artists a break from Photoshopping out all that LA scenery that's in all their location shots anyway. Victoria wants Prosser (who??) to buy the Stoneheart Group, Prosser wants Victoria for the sex-wanting-having-makings, Danny wants the Stoneheart Group BECAUSE, Emily wants him to get it ALSO BECAUSE, and Aiden just wants to put a bullet in the back of Victoria's dome but these damn gauzy, all-but see-through, essentially transparent, curtains keep getting in the way and he didn't finish the Golgo 13 tape he rented so he never got to the part where you learn if someone actually can make that shot (if that someone is Aiden, apparently no). If my sister is dies, Emily, I swear to christ, I'm gonna stop forwarding you Vines of this adorable sheeb dancing to 80s pump-up songs.

Poor pouty aiden!!! So pouty! So aiden! WHY DO YOU HAVE TO KEEP KISSING DANNY EMILY? You’re supposed to give me ALL the kisses, and Danny NO kisses, thats what boyfriends are! While Aiden is sabotaging Emily’s tolerance for him, Victoria is having covert meetings with Emily in her solarium and saying things like SABOTAGE and C'EST LE GUERRE. Someone is dead in a balaclava. Connie is still wearing shorts but now he’s smoking cubans and sparring over who is or is not the most emasculated with his ULTIMATE RIVAL Jason Prosser - Other Finance Guy. We mention 15 tv shows in a 1 minute period by accident, and Victoria is eyerolling Conrad’s posturing man-shorted ass all around the manor while she tries to actually take care of her sabotage. Dave does a Baby Conrad impersonation, and ponders whether elephants can actually appreciate a peanut. Also he loses his mind over those couple of lines from A Mighty Wind. I get pretty sleepy and dave looks at pictures of bears for like 5 minutes. I didn’t cut it out, you’re welcome.

Happy thanksgiving people! We do a lengthly thanksgiving roundup, discuss lasagna, and cry for a while about the nightmare food we encountered in VA. NIGHTMARE FOOOOOD. Why can’t people just make food that has flavor. WHY. We attempt to work out the logistics of making flavorless gravy with little success, and yet we are faced with the reality of its existence. One of life’s darker Mysteries. Meanwhile in the Land of Revanche Emily is breaking out a red sharpie for an old timey actual revenge Revenge. This time the target is Judge Barnes, up for nomination to the supreme court because he did such a good job during the ultra-sensationalized David Clark trial. That's how this Supreme Court shit works, just ask Chief Justice Ito. So there's a lot of ins and outs but also there's Valcony Alliances in the works where Victoria un-bans Emily from the Manor and, to prove just how un-banned she is, invites her to lemonade up on the balcony. Yes that balcony, the official Sadness Balcony what where Victoria goes to regret the past while looking stunning against the ocean… and also stare at Emily’s porch. In summation, we talk about how fucked up it was that Stephanie March married Bobby Flay. Also this is real, and from a real magazine: http://hamptons-magazine.com/ali-wentworth-stephanie-march-and-katie-lee-talk-summer-in-the-hamptons enjoy!!

So we get pretty excited about the fancy shotgun, green fields, and pretty tent party that the episode starts with. Victoria slowly takes an ornate shotgun out of an ornate shotgun box and starts hitting clay frisbees like someone who grew up hunting pheasant in Oxfordshire not chasing pigeons on the upper east side. We try to lay out exactly what we mean when we talk about collar watch, and there are so many collars to watch! Victoria is wearing a crazy lace collar thing, everyone is wearing weird vests, and this is an official DPPP episode! Lets take this time to thank Nolan for descending to our dirty plane of existence to give us a glimpse of the sublime. The reason for the shooting party is Victoria and Conrad are trying to save their precious baby potato boy from taking over Grayson Global and thus falling into the clutches of the initiative. Enter Sandoval, a Spaniard (or possibly Braziliard) and Influential Investor. Anyway everyone tries to manipulate everyone else and Emily and Aiden come out on top in the end. The main tool is a video of Ashley and Conrad having creepily enthusiastic sex, which gets sent to Victoria to weaken her allegiance with Conrad, but which Victoria manages to turn to her advantage by forcing Ashley to have sex with Salvador. Whats a little soul crushing sex with Salvador in the long run Ashley? Its not like Danny will realize his mother blackmailed you to have sex with this dude and then counter blackmail the dude into voting for him by taking a picture of the two of you and then DUMP YOU ANYWAY. Danny wouldn’t do that, who would do that??????

Hi everyone! It's another Flashback Episode with guest SomeVito! Just a heads up: we have our 24 Hour Charity Stream for Planned Parenthood coming up on Nov. 7th (this Saturday!) You can find the donation page here and, of course, the stream channel is here. So be sure to stop by and say hi and donate if you can!

It's Victoria’s turn for revenge in this episode and warning - its pretty rough or at least the catalyst for the revenge is pretty rough, the revenge itself isn't so over the top, really its just a very candid dinner conversation. See, it's Thanksgiving and Victoria decides to have story time about the last Thanksgiving she had with Mother Harper. Victoria has a Mother and Victoria has been planning her Mother’s demise since the last time they talked, which was apparently 40 years ago when Mother threw Victoria out of the house for getting molested by Mother’s boyfriend. Yup, I told you it was rough. So anyway Victoria springs her revenge trap which ends with her mother out on the street and penniless in a fur coat. Shit was pretty hard for everyone in 2006 not just for shitty mother Harper. Danny was being used as an unwitting pawn by the women in his life, Charlotte was barely acknowledged, Jack’s dad was alive, and a mean drunk AND a mean sober, and Ashley was in the process of getting trafficked by the mob. Emily meets Aiden in the Brighton Beach/Moscow club where Ashley will presently be trafficked, but luckily Emily saves them both. Takeda takes on a new pupil and has to open a remedial class in his Revenge School just for Aiden. Declan is also barely acknowledged.

Dave starts out by insisting we shouldn’t go on tangents then tenderly holds our hands as he hurls us down a Destiny/Nerd Paraphernalia/Youtube celebrity rabbit hole that lasts about 12 minutes. Then its a very Mason episode, Mason Mason Mason!!! How shall we describe all the Mason? Mason is, in his very special Mason way, being very Mason about everything. We get to hear his voice mail message, which is also his Twitter bio.

Mason is practically begging Amanda to crush his skull, bringing up the Baby Carl and her new life with Jack and then being all creepy-salacious about Amanda and Emily’s time in juvie. Mason this is not 1890 and you are not writing for the New York Journal, if you want to ask them if they dated go ahead, no need to go all yellow press on it and use the word "Sapphic".

I prove that I forgot everything I learned in law school yet again by talking about “common carrier” laws instead of an innkeeper’s duty to accommodate. I guess maybe it was just the commm that confused me but seriously, don’t go to law school kids, its a debt factory! ANYWAY rich people are rich, Nolan is adorbs, Amanda is murderous, and Emily is just barely keeping the circus together.

Emily decides Aiden has suffered through enough chest punching and has performed sufficient extracurricular penance that he is now eligible for smooches. He does seem pretty contrite but he also does seem pretty boring-handsome. Although god, not anywhere close to the most boring-handsome dude that will grace the cast of Revenge. Whats-his-face from season 4, I’m (not) looking at you. God your face is boring, I’m sorry but I can’t help it, your face is so boring!! Even though it is also handsome. But more importantly it is boring. Also bonus feature - Dave doing a ‘Scandinavian’ accent and being super pleased with it while he pretends to know what Borgen is.

We’re back, hi everyone! Thanks for tuning into our very special favorite passtime the REVENGECAST SPAZCAST PODCAST broadcast. Victoria and Conrad are getting re-married!!! And Conrad is getting framed for the only murder he didn’t commit and/or abet! I run out of words to describe how pretty Victoria is in her wedding pearls and Dave hashes out the entire plot of Demolition Man to me. Sounds pretty ok except for the whole culture wars political correctness panic premise.

Aiden is trying to get Emily to be ok with him again, but even though they shared that most intimate of moments--the thing where one person anime-flails on the other person's chest while crying--she apparently still needs more time. Mason is being remarkably Mason but believes, for now, that Fauxmanda is Amanda but Amanda makes sure Emily understands that she will 100% Frank Mason if he comes at her family again, and Baby Carl will be there to help roll the body into the ditch. He needs to learn to protect himself in preparation for blossoming into the beautiful juvie girl we all know him to be in his heart. In other goings on at the Stow Away, Creepy-Handsome Toothy Man is harassing Declan about sex and just being generally creepy and toothy in his stupid polos and dockers. How does Nolan make that preppy shit look so good?? Its so ugly on other people.

Speaking of Nolan, Nolan is crashing the Grayson’s rewedding--okay, technically he was invited but then Emily’s technically ordered him not to go unless he wanted to technically suffer the loss of his technical ability to breathe through his throat, nose, and mouth--but seriously Conrad gets hauled away in handcuffs during the first dance with Victoria so thats really something you want to see live rather than via Clam Cam. Victoria is so extremely happy as Conrad gets arrested that she gives us the first creepy smile of the season (?! is this possible? I don’t remember any others though) but she still sleeps with the mother-of-pearl-inlaid, monogramed 22 revolver he got her as a wedding present under her pillow. Awwwwwwww, she hates him so tenderly sometimes. We are pretty rough on babies in this episode, but to be fair they don’t understand words so who cares, but even if they did they apparently poop in peoples mouths (?!) so fuck those guys anyway.